Search

SATURDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) — The type of sugar in a sugary drink may impact how healthy — or unhealthy — it is for arteries, a new study suggests.Fructose-sweetened drinks are more likely to provoke the development of fatty artery deposits in overweight adults than glucose-sweetened beverages, researchers say.

Kimber Stanhope, of the University of California at Davis, and colleagues compared the results of drinking fructose-sweetened beverages versus glucose for 10 weeks in overweight and obese adults.

The researchers found that 9 weeks later, 24-hour post-meal triglyceride (blood fat) levels went up after 2 weeks of fructose-sweetened drink but went down in those who consumed glucose-sweetened drinks.

Those who drank fructose-sweetened drinks also had a boost in fasting blood concentrations of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and other measures. Those levels were unaltered in those consuming glucose-sweetened drinks, however.

The findings were scheduled to be presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association, in Chicago.

The bottom line, according to the researchers: “Persons at risk for developing metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease should avoid over-consumption of fructose-containing beverages.”

The ADA notes, however, that consumption of fructose-sweetened beverages has gone up by 135 percent in the United States over the past four decades.